The amyloid precursor protein regulates synaptic transmission at medial perforant path synapses

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Abstract
SUMMARY: The perforant path provides the main cortical excitatory input to the hippocampus. Due to its important role in information processing and coding, entorhinal projections to the dentate gyrus have been studied in considerable detail. Nevertheless, a characterization of synaptic transmission between individual connected pairs of entorhinal stellate cells and dentate granule cells is still pending. Here, we have used organotypic entorhino-hippocampal tissue cultures, in which the entorhino-dentate (EC-GC) projection is present and EC-GC pairs can be studied using whole-cell patch clamp recordings. Using cultures of wildtype mice, the properties of EC-GC synapses formed by afferents from the lateral and medial entorhinal cortex were compared and differences in short-term plasticity were revealed. Since the perforant path is severely affected in Alzheimer’s disease, we used cultures of APP-deficient mice to address the role of the amyloid-precursor protein (APP) at this synapse. APP-deficiency caused alterations in excitatory neurotransmission at medial perforant path synapses that were accompanied by transcriptomic and ultrastructural changes. Moreover, the deletion of pre- but not postsynaptic APP through the local injection of Cre-expressing AAVs in conditional APP flox/flox tissue cultures increased the efficacy of neurotransmission at perforant path synapses. Together, these data suggest a physiological role for presynaptic APP at medial perforant path synapses, which may be adversely affected under conditions of altered APP processing.
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